It hits you suddenly one morning; The realization that nothing you do will ever again be impressive because of your age alone.
If you earn a graduate degree or start a business at the age of twelve, you are extraordinary.
But neither makes you special at twenty-eight. You may be special for other reasons. But if you publish a book, or invent a new method for harvesting juniper berries, no one will say “and he’s only almost thirty!”
After all, you’ve had nearly three decades here on this rock, and you ought to have been spending your time on something.
Then, there is the time. The awareness of all the time that is forever behind you, and which you can never get back.
Tomorrow, you said, day after day. Tomorrow I’m going to start. Now, looking back on ten or fifteen years of tomorrows, you can’t help but wonder where you might be if more of them had been todays.
It’s a funny thing, you think, that life is planned forward but the only time you’re ever sure you own is the time you’ve already spent.
These two realizations are enough to turn the hair gray, and sometimes that is the next thing that happens. Or perhaps you make one last attempt at glory, opting for a mid-life crisis a few decades ahead of schedule.
But if you’re lucky, another realization begins to dawn on you:
That if you can no longer be impressive because of your age alone, you also don’t have to be.
The years, you realize, perhaps for the first time, are suddenly on your side. There’s no rush. The sun is setting on your chance to be a prodigy, but just as sunset somewhere is sunrise somewhere else, this passing of time shines light on a newer, more meaningful possibility: Long-term Mastery.